Booster Gold #10

Booster Gold #10
Cover Date: November 1986
Creative Team: Dan Jurgens (Writer and Pencils)/Mike De Carlo (Inks)/Agustin Mas (Letterer)/Gene D'Angelo (Colors)/Alan Gold and Barbara Randall (Editors)

Summary

Some thugs show Dirk a proof of life that his daughter is still alive, and then tell him that she’ll remain so as long as he keeps cooperating.

Senator Ballard, meanwhile, tells a reporter that he has nothing personal against Booster, right before he leaves to go back to his secret lair where he changes into his Director duds and starts ranting and raving about how he will defeat Booster, and he’s going to use Booster’s friends and family to help him do it. I'd make a lying politician joke, but I'm just so fucking tired of the Director, I don't have the energy for it.

Out in the city, Booster takes Trixie out for some pizza, because she had to skip lunch because she was so busy at Goldstar, Inc. She asks him to take off the mask for once, and he agrees. They go in and make small talk, and Booster reveals that his real name is Michael Jon Carter, and is about to get into his whole origin story when the Graham Center, a local skyscraper, goes up in flames, and he has to rush off.

On the outskirts of the city, the corpses of the writer and artist of the Booster Gold comic book are found in an old car, as the Director interrogated and them killed them the previous issue. Also, in a final act of spite, he's left their bodies in a copy of the Boostermobile. Now who will write and draw the ersatz version of Teen Titans? I'd like to think that this was step one in a very long-term plan for Dan Jurgens to take control of the Titans franchise.

The Director decides that it's time to take his vengeance against Booster to the next level, that would be level two,  so he sends out some robots to intervene in Booster’s attempt to save the day, figuring this would be an ideal time to pile on. Also, he reveals that he’s the one who orchestrated the kidnapping of Dirk’s daughter as part of his master plan to crush Booster once and for all. One of these days…

At Graham Center, Booster is helping to put out the fire when he gets attacked by generic robots. They’re not particularly good robots, but they aren't supposed to win. Instead, the Director has sent them to fight Booster in order to get a more accurate gauge of his fighting abilities. Or maybe because he's trying to use reverse psychology on story logic, and assumes that if he tries to fail, then he must surely succeed!

It turns out that Booster’s powers have been weakening ever since he came back to the past, and the rate of energy loss has been increasing. Director takes note of this, and vows to use it against Booster, even though it appears the best way to use it would be just to wait Booster out, which doesn’t really seem to be his plan.

Still, Booster is able to destroy the robots after a while, and gets interviewed by the press, who wants to know more about Booster’s relationship with Monica Lake. A jealous Trixie, who had been watching the fight, runs and Dirk follows, trying to explain that the relationship is just a publicity stunt, but she’s still upset.

And then she gets kidnapped by goons sent by Director, who tell Dirk not to tell anyone about what’s happened, or else they’ll hurt his daughter. Also, they want him to hack into the computers of Goldstar, Inc. To be continued!

  
Continuity!

-The real Boostermobile makes another appearance, and Booster still doesn't quite know how to drive.

Review

Booster Gold has been running for eight issues, and the Director has been tried to launch an attack on Booster in eight of them, failing every single time. I'm not sure he's really a supervillain at this point so much as a human version of Wile E. Coyote.

I guess the big revelation this issue is that Booster is slowly losing his powers, which I guess kind of makes the Director seem theoretically more threatening, especially since he killed those two comics guys, although I don't think Booster ever even met them.

Beyond that, Booster and Trixie get closer, only for her to get jealous when Monica Lake shows up. The whole Booster/Trixie relationship is kind of a dud, because it feels rote. The innocent farm girl and the arrogant jock from the big city hooking up? That's....not the most original idea Jurgens has ever come up with. Besides, it's really just basically an ancillary subplot that doesn't really add much to the book. I guess it humanizes Booster and gives Trixie something to do, but Booster is probably better off with his rougher edges still intact,

But, more than any of that, I just want to see Booster square off against someone, anyone, other than the fucking Director.